If by 100% effort you mean race 400's, then I'd think racing 8 of them, all out would be pretty much impossible isn't it?

KSimpsonTrek

posted: 8/22/2012 at 6:29 PM

Just an opinion, not factually based:

I'd think the 1-mile all out effort would put much significantly more stress on the body than the intervals. Although all out sprinting definitely can't be sustained for a mile's length, your heart rate will have plenty of time to rise and stay up, and Lactic Acid will continue accumulating until the end of the run.

Full recovery between your 8 x .25 mile intervals will allow your body to clear the excess lactic acid, allowing your body to operate under less stress. Intervalsare usually beneficial because they allow you to accumulate much more time of your training at higher speeds than just doing a consistent effort. (Example: 10 x 1:00 all out sprints w/ 90 sec rest VS. 10:00 all out sprint).

Your body wouldn't be able to maintain proper speed/form at an all out pace for 10:00, but if you separated the time into the 1:00 intervals, you could almost keep consistent form and energy output.

Assuming, like Happyfeet did, that the quarters are at 100 to 95% of quarter-mile race pace (in other words 8 x 400m at 400m pace) then that seems like the more stressful endeavor. Even with full recoveries, the muscle and connective tissue damage would be significant and you'd be sore for a few days, if not injured. Racing the mile is no cub scout meeting either but most of us have done it and lived to run another day. My .02

Along those lines, who would win in a fight: a polar bear or a gorilla?

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil Zatopek

When we did stupid workouts in HS, 6X400 at 95-100% 400m race pace was one of them. We took excessive (up to 5min) recovery, and it was way harder than racing a single mile.

I'm not sure any one of us could have managed 8 at that pace, perhaps on more base mileage than we ran. But it was a workout that served little purpose, in retrospect.

Now 8X400 at mile race pace is another matter. I'm not sure I'd say that or the mile is MORE stressful, but the type of stress is different. The interval workout would probably require more recovery as you have double the volume at a higher pace.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand